RPG! RPG! Black Hawk Down!

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When the Black Hawk Crashed, everything went to hell. We were there.

By Ivan Sulic

Bleak. Bland. Dead. Don't look at it. Staring toward this endless forsaken horizon that has found itself hopelessly suppressed by a consuming African sun will blind. Even the land blinds. Relentless, the light of Sol beats down heavily on an urban sprawl left and forgotten in the absolute most desolate middle of a neglected nowhere. It's the Atlanta of the old world, except sandier. And here you are, a bird, armed to the teeth and flying toward it at speeds too fast to process. A shanty town ahead makes the slums of Rio look inviting. It opens as you approach, your rotors whirling, whizzing and thumping. Welcome to Mogadishu. Smoke, dust and ash are your greeting. Bullets are your hello. Bodies are your party gifts.

The glorious CAR-15 gun model gets gripped tight, tighter, tightest. It's life. To not cherish it is to embrace death. Detailed texturing on the arms of your Delta Force operative feel like the tight, heavy threading of classic military grade attire -- something akin to a gi, perhaps. The helicopter whizzes and whirls, never ending. The pace quickens as land turns to a blur of brown and beige. You're not on point anymore. No, the lead chopper swoops down in front. Radio chatter erupts into screams of preparation. "Get ready! Drop in five!" The helicopter hits turbulence. The screen shakes, hearts race. It's all too much. A small jumble of structures that was once a tiny collage of rubble becomes noticeable housing, complete with makeshift dirt streets and obligatory broken-down automobiles that haven't been serviced in 30 years. A barren flight simulation engine instantly turns into an amazing scene of commotion. There are things down there, small things, bad things. Everything flies fast, smooth -- too fast, too smooth. Pace and preparation give way to panic and adrenaline as people come pouring forth from every shadow and doorway. Some are good, some are bad. You must decide. You must shoot with patience and care.

"RPG! RPG!"

To hell with that. It's on and everybody who's standing won't be for long.

You've just read a piece of the game. It might as well have been a transcript from one of the missions. The drama is Black Hawk Down, a horrific real world setting that was later condensed by Hollywood into a thrilling and brutal tale of American soldiering in the most far off of far-off lands. But how can the games industry do such a conflict justice? Easy, ask NovaLogic to make it beautiful and at the same time believable. Ask them to enthrall and shock. Ask them to make it hard, fast, brutal, big, and just like this.

I've played a beta of this drama far more than I should have. I've played its select missions too many times with too much fun to warrant a paycheck. It's pretty darn neat.

I attribute the sweet to believability, to feel. It's the way skulking through a dimly lit Mogadishan street feels, silencing one man after the other, carefully throwing one flashbang after the other. It's the way breaching a building with a small group of soldiers plays out. They may not coordinate like the best Halo and Raven Shield have to offer, but they work.

It starts at the engine: quantity over quality. Character models may seem a bit lacking close-up. No, they can't compete with NOLF 2 or Unreal II. Forget that, it's about the quantity. Take into consideration just how many people are on screen at any given time. I flew, riding on the rim of a helicopter, from five miles away, entered a small city, landed, breached a building, killed twenty guys at one time and then extracted to a point nearly a mile away on foot, fighting the whole way. It's about scope and scale. It's about a design method I wish we could see more often in gaming... Quantity over quality.

I'd rather have twenty Black Hawk Down characters on screen than one DOOM guy any day of the week. I remember, in fact, discussing this very topic with an assortment of shooter developers at 2001's Electronic Entertainment Expo. Some programmers at Volition, then busy developing the original Red Faction, agreed, as did some folks at Raven, proud to publicly show Soldier of Fortune II for the first time (before Jedi Outcast was even official). It's nice to see a team aside from Croteam getting the picture.

Make no mistake, despite arguably lacking character models and a heavy reliance on quantity to sell, this game is not ugly. Quite the opposite, in fact. Environments are stunning and look appropriately Comanche, with bright, vivid and vibrant colors, an insane amount of texturing, a ridiculous draw distance that puts even Battlefield to shame, and simply a whole hell of a lot of everything. Bump-mapping, pixel shading, high resolution textures, and more are all here.

Experience the intense combat of Operation Restore Hope in this groundbreaking first person shooter. As a Delta Force operative participate in a number of daring and intense raids against the oppressive Somali warlords in and around Mogadishu.